LONAR LAKE

June 14, 2020

The 56,000-year-old Lonar crater sanctuary lake in Buldhana district has turned red/pink and become a hot topic of discussion among scientists.

About:

Location: Lonar in Buldhana district, Maharashtra.
Formation: Lonar Lake, also known as Lonar crater, was created by a meteor impact during the Pleistocene Epoch. A meteorite estimated to weigh two-million-tonnes slammed into the Earth, around 50,000 years creating a 1.83-km diameter crater where the lake formed.
It is the only known hyper velocity meteorite crater in basaltic rock anywhere on Earth.
It was notified as a National Geo-heritage Monument in 1979 by Geological Survey of India (GSI).
It is famous as world’s largest basaltic impact crater. Two other similar ones are in Dhala and Ramgarh in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan respectively but both are relatively unknown.